Kleenex has now recalled their "Luxury Foam Hand Sanitizer" because they've found it to be full of the bacterium Burkholderia cepacia. B. cepacia normally lives in the soil but can become associated with people. Healthy people are not bothered by B. cepacia, but people with compromised immune systems can fall prey to its darker side.

The real issue here is the irony of a hand sanitizer being full of bacteria, one of the very "unsanitary" things it is supposed to be killing. Would it not be easier (and cheaper) to forgo the hand sanitizer and: wash with soap and water, or if that isn't possible, don't stick dirty hands in your mouth? I guess I don't understand the recent explosion in use of hand sanitizers, other than laziness or superior marketing by Kleenex and other companies. This is on the same level as "antibacterial" soaps, loaded with chemicals to make us feel "clean" when unadulterated soap is naturally antibacterial. The end result is more chemicals contaminating our blood and water supply, and more resistant microbes.

This rant is moving in the direction of the "hygiene hypothesis", a topic that I'll be posting a lot about. This hypothesis basically states that people living in developed countries are "too clean", and that because of this cleanliness, there are not enough microbes around to keep the immune system busy. Because the immune system likes to be doing something, it starts bugging human cells instead of microbes, resulting in problems like asthma, allergies, and irritable bowel syndrome. Many scientists are busy testing the hygiene hypothesis....so stay tuned for the verdict. In the meantime, put down the hand sanitizer and wash with non-antibacterial soap.